1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to control systems used in controlling angle of attack in flying an aircraft and more particularly to such a system employing a metering device which indicates a measured parameter which is integrated with a settable indexing device on which the desired value of the measured parameter can be set by an operator and electrical voltages representing the measured and set values are compared to provide an error control signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the control of the flight of an aircraft, there are certain significant parameters such as the angle of attack which must be continually monitored and the operation controlled to keep such parameters at a predesired value. This end result is often achieved by generating an output voltage representing the measured parameter by means of a potentiometer, the arm of which is driven by a device which senses the parameter. A measuring device of this type for measuring the angle of attack of an aircraft is described in Pat. No. 2,193,077 to Saxman, Jr. Resistive devices are also used in the prior art for generating a voltage in accordance with the manual setting of a reference pointer, such as described in Pat. No. Re25,674 to Hartifan, et al. and Pat. No. 3,697,922 to Hammond. Other prior art references generally involved with this subject matter include Pat. No.
3,514,997 to Gwathmey, et al. Pat. No. 1,986,695 to Warner and Pat. No. 1,142,134 to Barrows.